As a Free2Play game, League of Legends primarily finances itself through cosmetic content like skins. With every patch, a handful of new skins appear that can be purchased or obtained from chests. However, with the new season, Riot has removed a way to receive free chests.
What has changed? With the first season of 2025 in LoL, Riot has made some changes in and outside of the game. In the course of the new season structure, they also changed how battle passes work.
There are now fewer orbs and points with which you can unlock items. However, you do receive fixed skins that fit thematically with the current season. One of them is even free. In this context, Riot has also made a change to the mastery system.
Previously, you could unlock chests by reaching a certain number of ranks in games with specific champions. Now, you only receive “experience points” in the battle pass for that.
This is being criticized by many players, who are currently expressing their frustrations about not being able to receive free chests anymore.
Players are frustrated, even considering boycotting LoL
What do players criticize? In a recent Reddit post, a player shared his collection of chests that he has gathered over the year 2024. He writes in the headline: I don’t want to say goodbye.
He even claims that the removal of free chests is the worst decision in the history of the game.
Under the post, which has almost 1700 upvotes and over 230 comments, players are gathering who share the same opinion. They are even calling for a community boycott of the game.
- User SPINESnSPORES (via Reddit) writes:
We should all together not make any purchases for a whole month with other servers
- Komandarm_Knuckles (via Reddit) suggests to people to play other games:
Jump into Helldivers, or into another game […] I love League, but this is why I don’t want to play the game right now.
- Bobsafudge (via Reddit) claims to have been playing LoL for almost 13 years and criticizes the current development:
As someone who started in Season 2, it hurts to see how this game has become an absolute cash grab.
Only a few users express themselves less dramatically. ne0tas responds to Bobsafudge (via Reddit) and states that there used to be no reward system at all. Other users criticize that such a boycott wouldn’t work anyway or that many people simply do not care about it.
Is it really that bad? The situation is probably not that dramatic. Before the loot system was added, there were very few ways to obtain skins for free. For example, you had to subscribe to Riot channels. Even years ago, the Hextech chests were regularly criticized, as a Reddit thread from 2020 shows.
In the current battle pass, you can unlock a fixed skin without spending money. However, the opportunities to obtain free skins have indeed decreased significantly, as you can no longer obtain chests without real money. You now have to take the free skins that Riot offers you.
Will Riot change anything about the new system? So far, Riot has not revealed any plans to revise the new system. Even with the expensive Ahri and Jinx skins, there was a significant outcry within the community, but it did not lead to anything. However, Riot has already commented on the change in how champions can be unlocked: Change in LoL makes it harder to unlock new champions – Riot says “Should not become harder”
